Kahn and the Bath House

WHY WAS THE BATH HOUSE IMPORTANT TO KAHN

Louis I. Kahn had a modest portfolio to show for his thirty years of practice when the Trenton Jewish Community Center Association chose him to design its new home in suburban Ewing Township. It was the most complex commission Kahn had yet received, requiring him to wrestle with a new type of resource. Suburban community centers that included elements such as swim clubs and day camps in addition to main buildings were new to the 1950s.

After several years of planning and reviewing a number of designs, the Jewish Community Center built only two components of Kahn’s plan—the Olympic-sized swimming pool and Bath House, and the four modest pavilions at the Day Camp—before they dismissed him. The Center rejected Kahn’s overall vision for the site and hired another architect for the main community center building. The community center opened in 1962 and remains in use.

Nonetheless, for Kahn the Trenton project was a turning point. “I discovered myself after designing the little concrete block bathhouse in Trenton,” he told New York Times writer Susan Braudy in 1970. Like most of his later work, the Bath House is geometrically simple yet elegant. It is built of prosaic building materials, such as unadorned cinder block, concrete, wood, and asphalt roof shingles. It exploits natural light and evokes ancient monuments.

The significance of the Bath House transcends its strong aesthetic impact. On this project Kahn clarified his ideas about the specific purposes of spaces within a building. It was here that Kahn first articulated his notion of “spaces serving” and “spaces served.” Typically, “serving” spaces, such as those for toilets and utilities, are tucked away and hidden. But in Kahn’s work, beginning with the Trenton Bath House, the serving spaces are not only evident, they are integral to the design. “The Trenton Bath House is derived from a concept of space order in which the hollow columns supporting the pyramidal roofs distinguish the spaces that serve from those being served,” he wrote in 1957.

Trenton Bath House as a Source of Inspiration

Kahn clarified his thinking about “servant” and “served” spaces designing the Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building at the University of Pennsylvania (1957–61). Hailed as an engineering marvel, the building was unsatisfactory to scientists because Kahn assumed that their research was carried on in studios the way architectural design is.

The entrances to the changing rooms in the Trenton Jewish Community Center, which were “servant” spaces, played the structural role of supporting the roof.

Photo courtesy of the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania./ Courtesy of the Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, photo by John Ebstel, 1956.

Kahn used a roof opening and light diffusers to mix natural and man-made light in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (1966–72).

Kahn admitted natural light to the changing rooms in the Trenton Jewish Community Center through openings at the apex of the pyramidal roofs and via a gap of several feet between the roof line and the outside walls. His concern for the use of natural light carried over into all his later buildings.

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California (1959–65), is said to be the first building Kahn was truly happy with; here he found the meaningful monumentality he had been looking for since Trenton.

The pristine geometry of the Bath House, shown in this 1957 picture of the mural and main entrance, found expression in numerous later Kahn works.

Photo courtesy of the Architectural Archives, The University of Pennsylvania. / Courtesy of the Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, photo by John Ebstel, 1956.

Kahn believed in an honest use of building materials, by which he meant two things: that the basic construction material should be simple and unadorned, and that a building’s surface should make visible how it was made. These principles are illustrated in the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California (1959–65).

As shown in this view of the Trenton Jewish Community Center from the southeast, Kahn used unornamented cinder block, wood, and asphalt roof shingles for the Bath House.

As shown by the schematic plan of the Trenton Jewish Community Center (right) and the site plan of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (left), Kahn attempted to orchestrate outdoor spaces through the use of landscape materials. In both plans, he created a processional path from the parking lots to the building entrances.

Courtesy of the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. / Courtesy of the Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, photo by John Ebstel, 1956.